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Friday, October 23, 2015

Nicole Renee Taylor aka Niki Taylor (5 March 1975) was one of the top models of the early 1990s. Along with her sister Krissy, she appeared with all the top supermodels of the day. Niki has a distinctive beauty mark above her lip which gives her a distinctive look.

Niki Taylor ,Vogue UK, 1992.

Niki is from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and always wanted to become a model. She was one of three girls, with Joelle (older) and Krissy (younger).

At age 13, the was accepted by a Florida agency. From there, she won a Fresh Faces contest in New York. The $500,000 modelling contract sent her on her way.

By 1991, at the age of 16, Niki was president of her own company, Niki, Inc. However, she stayed in school, studying special effects for film and TV after she graduated from high school.

She was the youngest model to sign a major cosmetics contract with L'Oréal for CoverGirl in 1995. She was the youngest model to win such a contract at the time.

Allure US May 1996

Naturally, she has appeared on covers around the world for the past 25 years, including the following sampling:

In 1991, Niki was named as one of People magazine's '50 Most Beautiful People' and released her own calendar for several years. She appeared in the 1997, 1998 & 1999 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions.

March 1998 cover with Niki Taylor.

She appeared in the prestigious 'Sports Illustrated Knockouts: Five Decades of Swimsuit Photography' book. She was photographed often by Steven Meisel.

She has always loved dolphins, and got a dolphin tattoo on her ankle. Niki took singing and dance classes as a child, and they paid off when she appeared in Keith Urban's "Somebody Like You" music video. Niki has a beautiful website of her own.

Niki Taylor • Sante D’Orazio • Vogue UK, “Denim Now”, February 1992.

Niki was involved in a serious car crash in 2001 when her car, driven by her then-boyfriend, smashed into a utility pole. Niki incurred major internal injuries, required 100 units of blood, and was left in a coma for six weeks. She made a full recovery, and Niki later worked with American Red Cross and Nexcare Bandages for the sixth-annual Nexcare give program, which thanks blood donors and inspires others to "give," in celebration of World Blood Donor Day on June 14, 2014.

Niki Taylor has been married twice. She married former Miami Hooters linebacker Matt Martinez in 1993, and they had twin sons, Jake and Hunter. The couple divorced soon after. Niki later married NASCAR driver Burney Lamar on December 27, 2006, at the Grande Colonial Hotel in La Jolla, California. They have two children, daughter Ciel Taylor Lamar, born on March 4, 2009, and son Rex Harrison Lamar on November 11, 2011.

Many fans assumed that Niki had retired to raise her family. For a bunch of years, she had no major credits following a 2011 appearance on Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice." However, that does not make Niki a "failure," as she claimed a certain celebrity-oriented cable network show misrepresented on one of its shows. Niki sued, and then settled out of court with the network. Appearances that she had retired in fact proved to be completely false - it turned out that Niki had just taken a break to raise her two youngest children.

In 2017, Niki returned to the modelling scene in a big way, appearing in Swimsuits For All’s latest summer campaign alongside plus-size model Ashley Graham and singer and dancer Teyana Taylor. Niki's back and better than ever!

Claudia Schiffer (25 August 1970) is a German supermodel who has been an iconic figure for models since the 1980s. She remains popular to this day, and is the creative director of her own clothing label.

Claudia is from Rheinberg, Germany. It is a small town 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) northwest of Duisburg, near the Dutch border. She is one of four children, with two brothers, Stefan and Andreas, and a sister, Ann Carolin.

The story goes that Claudia was in a Düsseldorf nightclub at a friend's birthday party when Michel Levaton of the Metropolitan agency spotted her. She was just 17 years old. Ah, if that kind of miracle only happened every day....

That was the beginning of the legend, and the subsequent details don't really matter. Claudia has been on about as many covers as any model in history. She apparently has stopped trying to get them because, you know - she's done that. Yes, I know what you're probably thinking, it must be nice.

Legend has it that Claudia holds the record for appearing on the most magazine covers (well over 700), though that's difficult to pin down with precision. Claudia Schiffer has 58 Vogue covers alone, including:

Vogue US (16)

Vogue Paris (4)

Vogue Italia (3)

Vogue UK (4)

Vogue Germany (15)

Vogue Spain (7)

Vogue Korea (3)

Vogue Russia (2)

Vogue Australia (2)

Vogue Japan (1)

Vogue Turkey (1)

Vogue Taiwan (1)

Yes, you are correct... that is an outlandish number of Vogue covers. Quite unusual.

Claudia Schiffer on the Vogue US March 1996 by Steven Meisel.

Below are a few covers. There are many, many more covers stretching back decades:

Claudia snagged several high-profile gigs early in her career. She raised the profile of Guess?, and then became the face of Chanel after Karl Lagerfeld personally chose her. She was in the May 1997 issue and on the cover of Playboy Magazine.

As with many supermodels, Claudia's opportunities outgrew modelling. She began a film career with "Richie Rich," and numerous films followed.

Some of Claudia's high-profile movie appearances include "Love Actually" and "Zoolander." She also produced a series of fitness videos entitled "Claudia Schiffer's Perfectly Fit." She continues to make television appearances, primarily simply appearing as herself, such as on a 2016 episode of "The Insider." Claudia has turned her attention to producing projects, too, such as the 2017 "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" and 2016 "Eddie the Eagle." For some reasons, Claudia bills herself in the producer role as Claudia Vaughn - but nobody refers to Claudia Schiffer as Claudia Vaughn.

In addition, Claudia released an autobiography called "Memories" appeared in Peter Lindbergh's book "10 Women" and the book "A second decade of Guess? images." Claudia appeared in the music video "Say it isn't so" by Bon Jovi.

Claudia has had a few notorious incidents in her larger-than-life life. She had a legendary relationship with magician David Copperfield, whom she met in Berlin in 1993 when he hired her to help with his onstage magician act. Nobody at the time could figure that one out, and there were a lot of jokes about how Copperfield had worked his magic on Claudia. However, it was a very real relationship: when a tabloid claimed it was all a sham and that Copperfield was paying Claudia to hang out with him, Claudia famously sued and recovered damages. The happy couple remained together through the 1990s before breaking up.

Claudia has several unusual claims to fame. She has a toy doll made to resemble her, along with fellow models Karen Mulder and Naomi Campbell. She was part owner in the Fashion Café restaurant chain with Campbell and Elle MacPherson. A wax statue of her appears in the Grévin Museum in Paris.

On 25 May 2002 she married the film director Matthew Vaughn in Suffolk. Schiffer and Vaughn have three children: son Caspar Matthew (born 30 January 2003, Westminster, London) and daughters Clementine Poppy (born 11 November 2004, Westminster) and Cosima Violet (born 14 May 2010). The marriage has been a happy one.

Claudia and her family live in Coldham Hall mansion near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which is a Grade 1-listed hall built in 1574. As with everything else about Claudia's life, it is a stupendous home, a 14-bedroom Tudor mansion on 530 acres. It has been featured in Architectural Digest. Claudia and Vaughn were out for a drive in 2002 when Claudia, on a whim, decided that they should turn into the driveway. Up they drove, then the pair parked the car and knocked on the mansion's massive front door. Claudia charmed the owners and bought the place a few months later surrounded by 120 of her closest friends..

Claudia says that the mansion is haunted. Fortunately, a medium that she hired told Claudia that the ghosts are all "lovely." No worries, she'll just charm the ghosts into doing the housework.

Claudia remains involved in the fashion scene, though she hasn't done much modelling herself for several years. It's not that she can't - simply that she doesn't have to. Instead, she hosts shows and makes celebrity appearances. For instance, in July 2017 she was at the Chanel Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2017-2018 show as part of Haute Couture Paris Fashion Week. She also co-hosted the annual Serpentine Gallery Summer Party in London. Basically, all Claudia has to do is go out to dinner and she makes the tabloids, so her star remains firmly high above in the heavens.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Andreea Diaconu (March 28, 1991) is a Romanian model. She is only the second Romanian (after Diana Moldovan) to pose for the Victoria's Secret catalog. The two are good friends and in business together.

Andreea is from Bucharest, Romania. The story goes that when she was 11, a talent scout first tried to sign her. She modelled at a local contest, and won 500 Euros:

My friend and I heard about a modeling school that had a contest where the winner got 500 euros. We thought that was a lot of money, so we went to the school, and I won.

Andreea gave up modelling for a while after that because she was, like, 11. However, when she was an aged woman of 13, Andreea gave it a go again. An agent booked her to appear in New York, but it was a traumatic experience. Once again, she gave it up after a hairdresser made her cry:

I remember crying and crying, and everything was too big on me. I was 13. I was a beanpole.

She was only 13 and already had given up modelling twice! Maybe the third time would be better.

Fortunately for the modelling world, Andreea continued modelling on the side back in Romania. This involved travelling to the major European destinations such as Paris. She gave it a go full-time, and the third time was indeed the charm. Andreea first appeared on the runway during Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2007 at age 15.

The modelling gigs continued, and Andreea was so successful that at age 21 she moved to New York. She never finished her education, but picks up classes at Western University when she has the time. All of her travelling helped Andreea to pick up five languages.

Andreea is still young, and has only scratched the surface of her talent. Andreea has been on covers around the world at a steady pace for the past decade, including:

2017

August Vogue Mexico

March Vogue Spain

2016

December Elle Norway

September Vogue Mexico, Elle France, Vogue Spain, Vogue Mexico

June Vogue Turkey

February Twin Magazine

2015

October Vogue Spain, Vogue Netherlands

February Self Service, Vogue Korea

January Vogue Germany

2014

September Vogue USA

May The One

March Vamp, Intermission Magazine

February WSJ

2013

October Vogue Spain

June Vogue Paris

May Harper's Bazaar Romania

April The One

2012

August Glow

June Elle Russia

February Annabelle

Andreea has been walking the major runways since 2006. In 2015, she walked for Gap in the Autumn/Winter and Donna Karan and Tiffany & Co. in the Spring/Summer. She has modelled for all the top designers, including Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Stella McCartney and Ann Taylor. She currently has a major contract with DKNY.

Andreea Diaconu is very interested in Green causes. She offers some simple tips for a Greener life in Vogue:

Refill your water bottle over and over again. Refill, refill, refill! Same for a coffee mug. When you go supermarket shopping, bring your own shopping bag. Avoid plastic bags at bodegas or fruits packaged in plastics—such a strange concept. Let’s do something and ban plastics in New York state.

Andreea freely gives her time to charitable causes, including St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and other worthwhile endeavours. She stands 5'10.5" and has dark brown hair and green eyes.